The Snakedancer
by D-Savano
Summary: On most Saturday nights, Tom Riddle enjoyed the finer leisures of life. But the Snakedancer had just arrived in town, and her movements were a trail of hisses that did not go unheard. (Ages 15 plus)


**a/n:** Indeed, if the suspicions haven't already arisen, then I'll just go ahead and declare that theme of this story revolves around exotic dancers. If that isn't your cup of tea, or if it makes you unbearably uncomfortable, then I doubt you'd enjoy this story.

-x-

Habit usually followed a man carefully, an unforgiving entity that shadowed his movements, luring his curious will as a wanton woman would. Accompanying his hourly thoughts, habit would convincingly make its way into his planned ventures—although mostly periodically.

Tom Riddle, with all his academic accomplishment that polished his name, along with a powerful mind that devoted itself to ambitious discipline, still suffered from the will of habit. One in particular made itself prominent on most Saturday nights. After all, even with the phenomenon of a split soul, he still had the body of a man. Granted, a mind of a monster—but a monster's traits did not erase the primal instincts of a young blooded male.

These instincts ran deeply, so much so he often caught himself musing over the intricacies of pleasure. Tom was no ordinary man, and neither was his liking for pleasure. His mind, excruciatingly detailed in preference, painfully fussy about choice, seeked abstract and misunderstood forms of elegance. He had concluded at a young age that the most complex embodiments of elegance were often misunderstood. And it was from there that the roots of his love for the Dark Arts grew, a misunderstood art form that only he found extreme beauty in.

Twisted as his thoughts were, he knew the last shred of conscience that he held, of humanistic nature, had lost its arguement to the Dark Arts due to its immeasurable potential. This perhaps occured even before the mere age of seven. You see, the Dark Arts spoke volumes to him. It bred raw power in his mind, it bred an insane fury of control. The Dark Arts had seduced his greed, the same way that pleasure had seduced his primal instincts.

At the mere age of sixteen, his mind had already started to wander off into various explorations of pleasure. One could say he had started to venture down the roads of emotionless sexuality—which was an odd mixture, however one that he couldn't help. Tom Riddle could never know true human emotion, his birth was bewitched with this inability.

Growing up, Tom's philosophies were sick, not to mention murderous, and had the macabre touch of the devil himself, but one philosophy that he had absolutely nailed was that pleasure was simply not love. He'd grown to enjoy the former, but had stayed an alien to the latter.

Opportunities of physical pleasure lingered throughout the back alleys of the other towns that were scattered around Hogsmeade. Most students of Hogwarts were blissfully unaware of this fact, but when Tom had scouted the surrounding towns for magical resources, this had come to his realization.

But no, Tom didn't want cheap physical pleasure. He wanted enigmatic subtlety, ornamented by a secretive seduction—to complement his bold ambition and accompany his ever growing strength in power. No, no, Tom didn't want a hurried instance of quick sexual satisfaction. He wanted something more refined, something that held more abstract energy, something even magic could never decipher. He wanted unchartered sensuality.

It would seem that magical firedancers were subject to his newfound interest in sensual musings. The girls were as foreign as the spells that they used, to charm the doting men that watched him.

Let me tell you a story that took Tom Riddle on his first venture, uncovering the discovery of these firedancers. It was a summer ago when he had first sauntered into one of these places, as a result of a hunt for a book that specialised in the effects of dark magic on the human mind. It was two towns away from Hogsmeade. He had just turned seventeen, when his hormone infused mind and unique taste had spotted a woman standing near a door of a shady, underground business, excitedly speaking to a wizard. And she had worn nothing else but the eccentric flames of a burning fire.

Indeed, she was naked to the bone, and was draped only in flames that covered up her body. Tongues of fire had enveloped her—the fiery orange tips licked her neck, scorching her skin to a tan charcoal glaze. Tom had never witnessed this form of magic, much less understand it.

It had caused his mind to question. Her beauty coupled with her mere movements had drawn the attention of his mind, the first time something other than dark magic that had managed to catch his eye. But he had pondered; could this fire that she was wearing be bewitched to intrigue a man's eyes? Was that even possible? Or was this just his unindentifiable curiosity? He didn't know, but it was alright. He could always follow her, he could try to further understand this walking energy of fire.

This was where he'd uncovered the secret world of enchanted firedancing. On sight, this was capturing to anyone's eyes. A child's joy would express its glee at the amount of fire tricks that was performed, a woman would admire the feminity which seeped through the creations of dancing fire, perhaps unknowingly envy it as well. But it was their intrinsic movement that could only speak to a man's instinctive core, which drew his senses and piqued his pleasure with bleeding grace that exuded from their art.

"May I help you?" A gruff voice asked, when Tom had nonchalantly followed the woman into the the underground facility.

Tom barely acknowledged the man as a ray of a gentle orange hue caressed his face. It seemed that a vivid glow of fire had stolen his attention, his eyes feasting upon the sight of sultry that greeted him. The place was dark, and Tom concluded that he had led himself into a sort of speakeasy— not quite an underground ramshackle of alcohol and pleasure, but not quite a fantasy land either.

His mouth slightly parted when saw the descending dancers being unravelled by the silk robes that hung from the roof, gracefully reeaching for the ground, illiciting bouts of fire with evey spin. Visually, it helped that all of them were only wearing a dark blue or an orange fire.

"Listen here, you git. This is an invite only. If you aren't on the list, you can see yourself out," the same gruff voice cut through again.

Tom's eyes shifted to the man who had spoken. Without a hint of movement or even a slight change in his set expression, Tom nodded.

"Forgive me. Would you care to know the client that you are speaking to ?"

He spoke with absolute conviction, his voice still with authority, although he hadn't even visited the place before.

The man's eyes narrowed, studying Tom's indifferent face that quietly challenged his authority.

"Are you from the Frere Wizards?"

"I'm not."

"Then I don't see the poi—"

Before the man could finish his sentence, Tom had jerked his chin forward to the man's frowning face, before cutting him off.

"I think you'd like to want to see your wrist."

The man's eyes were first struck with a shocked irritation because of the way Tom had so blatantly cut him off. But before he responded, he felt a funny tingle below his palm. On lifting his arm, he saw the eerie creation of a black mark on his wrist, in the form of a snake, hissing furiously at him.

The man's eyes widened, the realization of Tom's ability at Dark Magic dawning upon him. He started shakily. "Sir, if I—"

"I'd like to consider coming here more often," Tom stated, carefully observing his surroundings, unbothered about his mumbling. His eyes had started going back to trace the trails of fire that had begun to curl up the girls' thighs.

"Of–Of course. I'll speak to the manager right away."

"Thank you," Tom replied quietly to him, as the man scurried away.

Tom then slowly made his way into the speakeasy. He had made sure to transfigure his Hogwarts robes into that of usual black ones, as seeing a Hogwarts student in a place like this would raise unnecessary suspicion.

It was the 1940s and beyond the time of the prohibition era, and a speakeasy was quite a rarity for Britain—as it was more of an American concept, but Tom was sure that underground pleasure facilities weren't a terribly new concept to the world.

On watching the girls more closely, Tom deduced that they must've had some part of Veela blood flow through them. There was careful enticement that overflowed through the outline of these girls movements, unaware of its own magnitude on the men present. It was a fierce combination of a Veela's calculated seduction, the power of magical conjuration and raw human sensuality.

Tom eyed a leather one seater that was situated at the end of the room. There were a few other men who watched him make his way, and wondered why someone so young was visiting a place of this calibre.

As Tom sat down on the chair, he noticed he was garnering the attention of more and more people, who were mostly observing his air of superiority in the way he carried himself or his flair of dominance that he made people feel by just looking at him.

But Tom's eyes didn't deviate. He was fascinated; there was a sudden creation of a dark shade of fire that devoured the ground and moved around the girls' legs. On the dark fire spreading, all the girls had clung onto a wooden pillar and pulled themselves up, as if to escape the fire, and started to swing around it. Accompanying these movements was the rhythm of jazz music that casually played in the background.

As they revolved gracefully around the pillar, the fire that hugged them started to strip away from their bodies and slowly creep back down to the ground. The bright orange fire that some of the girls wore or the bright blue—whichever it may have been, would encapsulate the dark shades of fire that lay on the ground, which created a sort of good-triumphs-evil symbolism. The flames that once wrapped their bodies were now being slowly removed from their legs upwards, in a way of a long strip that unfurled, uncovering a slow sensual burn—only to dissolve the black, dirty fire that gloomily roamed on the ground.

This movement, for all its theatrical appeal and portrayal of the untold nobility of a Veela's fire, seemed to cause all the men in the room to whistle and holler. But Tom's eyes only studied a girl in particular, whose body was partially being uncovered by an orange fire and suddenly reconjuring fire continuously to keep her from going completely naked. There was something about the way she moved, or the way her expressions seemed to lack any superficiality, unlike her Veela peers. It would seem she displayed an uncanny amount of warmth, and didn't suggest any seduction in her movements, her traits were seemingly completely human.

For a quick instant, her eyes caught Tom's and she shyly looked away, with a slight blush that complemented her hair. Ironically, her hair reminded him of the very same fire that she bared. With an amused shake of his head, Tom flicked his index finger and a dark wisp of black fog reached out in her direction. It gently ollowed her every circular swing around the pillar, curling around her ankles and almost playfully distracting her.

She then gently swung off from the pole, and used her right hand to command the orange fire around her, to follow the black wisps back to Tom's hand. As the fire flowed with a surprising amount of fluidity towards him, it had taken the flames that were wrapped around her along with it, slowly uncovering her body again. She gave him a daring but small smile, pushing her hair to fall to the left side of her neck, while still controlling the fire to mingle with his black wisps.

It was an interesting interaction between the chemical makeup of fire and fog, as they both circled each other, trying to overlap each other. It also made absolutely no sense as a colour scheme, but there was an amusing—almost teasingly sense of fun, due to the fire that kept revealing and concealing her body in periodic intervals. Sometimes with her own conjuration of fire and sometimes with the fog from Tom Riddle.

Tom turned for a quick second to catch a man's attention, intrigued to find out more about her.

"What might her name be? I'd like to remember this one," Tom enquired, still amused.

The old man gruntled. "The lass is a favourite around here. I'm afraid you're not the first who fancies her."

"That isn't an issue." Tom was confident in his ability to charm a woman, or at least his magical abilities to do so.

"That one's Lillian Weasely."


End file.
